Literary classics I was supposed to like and hated

[ellid]

We all know them: books we are supposed to like and actually can't stand, for various reasons. Here are five that I particularly despised:

1. The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath. I still remember a friend of my mother's urging me to read this because I allegedly reminded her of the protagonist. It was only much, much later that I realized how insulting it was to be compared to Esther Greenwood, who was mentally ill, self-pitying, and did one stupid thing after another. There's a couple of very striking images, but why anyone would suggest that an intelligent teenage girl read this is beyond me.

2. Jude the Obscure and pretty much the whole of Thomas Hardy's works. Horrible, depressing books full of horribly depressed people living in grinding poverty and ignorance, suffering from horrible (if unrealistic) events like drowning in ponds, having an entire herd of sheep shoved off a cliff by insane collies, and flinging themselves out of windows to avoid having sex.

3. The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway. Boring, boring, boring. Maybe I would have a different opinion if I'd read this when it was first published, but man oh man was this disappointing. Malcolm Cowley's Exile's Return is a much better look at the Lost Generation.

4. Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll. As I am not a mathematical genius, dislike clever word puzzles (or, why I fantasize about killing Will Shortz DEAD DEAD DEAD for those asinine puzzle sequences on NPR), and am not a Victorian maiden willing to pose naked for the kindly maths don, this book left me cold. Never finished it.

5. The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger. Can someone please run over Holden Caulfield with a bus? Please?

BONUS:

Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte. Heathcliff is a sadist, Cathy is a fool, and the whole book left a nasty taste in my mouth. It's a shame, too, since Jane Eyre, by Emily's sister Charlotte, was flat-out brilliant.

Anyone else have a Great Book they'd love to shove down the literary shredder?

Comments

[tx-cronopio.livejournal.com]

With you pretty much on all of these, esp the Bell Jar. Now, shall we talk about Dickens?!

[amykb.livejournal.com]

Loved, or at least liked, all of those, but I never could get through The Last of the Mohicans, and I *hate with a passion* anything by Herman Melville.

[ladyaelfwynn.livejournal.com]

Ones I was supposed to read but couldn't force myself to as I found the chapters I did read deathly dull: Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer.

OMG! Were those two dull as dish water books. Didn't care about anybody! Felt as though I had way better things to do with my time.

I did like both Alice in Wonderland and some of Thomas Hardy's books like the Mayor of Casterbridge. In general, I prefer Hardy to Dickens, actually.

I've not read much early 20th c. Amer. Lit. because I'm a snob. I've yet to find any Amer. lit written before WWII that I consider worth reading, except for Edgar Allen Poe and certain Southern short story writers. Most Am. Lit. bores me to tears.

Much of it seems to be manly men, doing manly things, and I just don't care!

Great books I'm not planning on reading, ever, include: Grapes of Wrath, anything by Earnest Hemmingway, Moby Dick, and Catcher in the Rye, to name a few off the top of my head. I'm certain there are more but I just can't think of them currently.

[ellid.livejournal.com]

I really enjoyed A Tale of Two Cities, and I rather liked Great Expectations, especially Dickens' original ending. Oliver Twist, though - UGH .

[valis2.livejournal.com]

I am SO WITH YOU about #5. SO. I hated that book with a bitter and deathless hatred. It was so awful.

[ellid.livejournal.com]

I actually thought parts of Huckleberry Finn were hilarious, especially the part where Tom and Huck conspire to free Jim in a ridiculously convoluted manner cribbed from Dumas pere.

Actual early to mid 20th century Americans I read again and again include E.B. White (brilliant, brilliant essays) and James Thurber, plus Malcolm Cowley's criticism. I also love mid-century detective novels, especially those by Rex Stout and Ellery Queen.

[ellid.livejournal.com]

I have never understood why J.D. Salinger is so highly regarded by critics. NO ONE talks like the Glass family, and Holden is a whiny little brat who needs to be slapped repeatedly with a large wet fish.

[ellid.livejournal.com]

I assume you've read Mark Twain's opinion of Fenimore Cooper and his Deerslayer books... (http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/HNS/Indians/offense.html)

[mad_maudlin]

E has threatened to break up with me because I don't like Hamlet.

[ellid.livejournal.com]

Hamlet himself can be pretty annoying.

[nicolaa5.livejournal.com]

I love Thurber. I love that he was from Columbus and so I get all the inside Columbus jokes. I love his silly drawings. I love his relatives that thought electricity was escaping from the light sockets or that burglars were coming to chloroform her. I read "The Dog that Bit People" for one of my Toastmasters interpretive reading projects.

[nicolaa5.livejournal.com]

The subtitle of the play is "Everybody Dies But Horatio."

[musikologie.livejournal.com]

I agree with this comment so much. I had to read Catcher right after The Merchant of Venice in high school, and there was really no comparison.

[musikologie.livejournal.com]

The 13 Clocks is one of my favorite books! So much love for Thurber.

[celandineb.livejournal.com]

I disliked The Bell Jar and Wuthering Heights, too. I DO like Alice in Wonderland (am fond of word puzzles). Not sure if I've read Jude the Obscure or The Sun Also Rises, but I generally like Hardy and I do NOT like Hemingway. I know I've never read The Catcher in the Rye, although how I managed to miss it I'm not sure.

Generally I don't like clever arty literary sorts of books, the sort that get rave reviews in literary magazines or the NYT Review of Books, and win various prizes. I can't think of any titles off the top of my head though.

[celandineb.livejournal.com]

My favorite Dickens works are Bleak House and David Copperfield. I'm with you on Oliver Twist!

[ellid.livejournal.com]

"The Night the Bed Fell" STILL cracks me up, especially the part where the loony grandfather thinks that Nathan Bedford Forrest's cavalry is sweeping down on Columbus. I also ADORE "File and Forget," where the narrator is sent hundreds of copies of a book called Grandma was a Nudist and ends up burning them in Cos Cob, Connecticut.

[ellid.livejournal.com]

It's another book teenagers are supposed to like, God knows why. Sort of like everyone was reading Death Be Not Proud, about a heroic teenager heroically dying of a glioblastoma, the same hideous tumor that killed Ted Kennedy. I spent the next six months terrified that every headache was a brain tumor....

[ellid.livejournal.com]

I refuse to read them. All too many of the American ones were written under the influence of MFA programs or writer's workshops, and there isn't a real character in the lot. I seriously think that the great books of the late 20th century are all going to be genre books, not literary fiction.

[ellid.livejournal.com]

Or as the late Richard Armour put it, "The stage is strewn with rushes in the first act and corpses in the fifth."

Even so, Hamlet is infinitely preferable to The Revenger's Tragedy, which starts with the protagonist tenderly cradling his dead sweetheart's skull....

[knic26.livejournal.com]

This is why I love LJ! or, why I fantasize about killing Will Shortz DEAD DEAD DEAD for those asinine puzzle sequences on NPR

I have an flister that is a puzzle person, a personal friend of Will Shortz, and participates in some of his puzzles at conventions.

The Interwebz is (are) the truest melting pot ever!

[helwen.livejournal.com]

Love Thurber!

Book that not only I but my entire class hated so much that the teacher found us another book to read? The Fall of the House of Usher by E.A.Poe

[ellid.livejournal.com]

different strokes for different folks...:)

[ellid.livejournal.com]

*dies*

I loved Poe, but I can see why your class revolted at that one....

[fitzw.livejournal.com]

I liked Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, but I don't recall doing so because of being a "mathematical genius" nor because of "clever word puzzles". I've never read (nor even tried to read) any of the other books that you list.